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The sun was bright and cast the whole park in a friendly, warm light. Wilhelm toddled around on his five-year-old legs still unaccustomed to the patent leather shoes cladding his feet. Other children ran around him, shrieking with joy and clutching wicker baskets full of chocolate eggs wrapped in foil all colours of the rainbow. Amidst the crowd of children, Wilhelm was happy to be swept around, a leaf in a stream of movement laughing indiscriminately and rushing to each neatly pruned bush in the hopes of delicious treasure underneath.
Wilhelm was just checking around the base of a birch tree, the spindly branches adorned with a customary spread of vibrantly coloured feathers at the tips, when he heard a shrill voice barking his name, slicing through the sounds of children’s laughter and the gentle plink of music like a hot knife through cotton candy.
“Wilhelm! Where have you run off to this time?” Ingrid Ohlsson cut an imposing figure entirely at odds with her floral sundress, the cream ribbons in her hair framing her permanently pinched mouth and omnipresent earpiece.
Clutching tightly at his basket, Wilhelm froze, prey instincts warring over whether to make a run for it or stay still, hunker down and hope her shark like gaze would pass right over him. The easter eggs in his basket rustled slightly as a small tremor took hold.
Too late. Ingrid’s eyes found her target and she immediately homed in, clipboard swinging in time with her marching stride. When she reached Wilhelm, Ingrid crouched down to his eye level. A smile stretched over her mouth, bearing her bleach-white teeth.
“Look at you, having fun. I told you there was no need for all those tears this morning, hmm?”
Before he could answer Ingrid grabbed his basket with the hand already carrying her clipboard and Wilhelm’s hand in the other and started pulling him towards a grouping of adults at the centre of the park. A rocky outcropping of this seasons latest Burberry and sophisticated camera equipment in the sea of playing kids surging around them.
As they got closer Wilhelm could see his family. They were in full media mode, as befitting the half dozen or so cameras capturing their every movement in HD quality. His father was striking the perfect balance as required from his position, animatedly retelling some story or another while still keeping one hand on the small of his wife’s back, both charismatic and deferential. The Queen herself, Wilhelm’s mother, was poised and perfect. A wry smile graced her face as she listened to her husband’s tale of being chased by a swan on an Easter day from his youth, but she remained above the outbursts of laughter that had besieged several attendants and members of the media around them.
It was Erik that Wilhelm’s eyes was drawn to. The first born son was resplendent in his Easter best, knees missing the grass stains that Wilhelm had managed to acquire and hair combed back with military precision. His posture was straight with an easiness that Wilhelm had never been able to pull off without looking rigid and forced. Erik stood in front of their parents with his father’s nose and his mother’s confidence, the trio the very picture of an idyllic Nordic family.
Ingrid deposited Wilhelm next to his brother with a quiet harrumph and immediately began corralling the loose strands of his hair. The photographers and news teams around them readied their equipment, lenses aimed at the royal family like a firing squad. His father looked down at Wilhelm with a warm smile.
“One of these days we are just going to have to bite the bullet and put a tracking anklet on you, huh kiddo?”
Wilhelm grinned weakly in return but it faded quickly as his attention turned to the swarm of people in front of him, decked out with lanyards and thirsty for a story. Ingrid finished her work on Wilhelm’s hair and moved out of the way, clapping to get the family’s attention.
“Alright, big smiles now!”
The clicks and shutters from the cameras descended like a swarm of locusts. Wilhelm could almost feel the bugs buzzing deep in his stomach, crawling up his throat and making him swallow. He raised his hand to bite at the nail of his right thumb, chewing at the well-worn digit. His mother swooped in immediately, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezing tightly.
“That’s unbecoming, Wilhelm. You know better than to act like a baby.” His mother’s words were spoken softly, not even interrupting the pleasant smile on her face, yet Wilhelm pulled his hand away from his mouth as if he had been burned. The unease tightening in his stomach increased and his hands clenched at his sides, short nails digging into his palms.
Erik looked over at his younger brother and took his hand, interlocking their fingers tightly. Wilhelm met his eyes and Erik flashed a reassuring smile, before turning back to the cameras. Taking a shuddering breath, Wilhelm steeled himself and then did the same, smile plastic and weak.
“The great pacific garbage patch has a surface area of 1.6 kilometres squared, that’s twice the size of the American state of Tex- hey! You’re not even paying attention!” Wilhelm looked up from his well-worn cue cards to see his brother lounging on his bed, eyes glued to his phone. Erik glanced up and shot Wilhelm an apologetic look before returning to his texts.
“Keep going, you’re doing great, I just have to answer August real quick.”
Wilhelm threw his cards onto the ground and launched himself at Erik on the bed, all pointy elbows and limbs still acclimatising to their most recent growth spurt. Erik laughed and pulled his brother into a loose headlock, rubbing at his skull with his knuckles.
“I don’t want to hear about August, you’re only back from Hillerska for the weekend and I have to give my speech in class next Friday!” Wilhelm complained, putting up a token struggle but quietly enjoying being held by his brother after a half term spent apart.
Erik acquiesced, throwing his phone to the other side of the bed and pushing Wilhelm to stand at the foot of the bed once more.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Our next rowing tournament is definitely less important than the ecological threat we’re currently facing as a global community.” The smile in Erik’s voice was evident, grinning at Wilhelm as his little brother scowled but bent down to pick up his cue cards. Wilhelm shuffled the cards back into their proper positions and then picked up where he had left off in his practice.
“The great pacific garbage patch, why are you laughing!”
Erik clapped a hand over his mouth but it was too late to stifle his hiccupping.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just you speak in such a serious monotone, just loosen up. The world’s not coming to an end, it’s just a speech.” Erik straightened up, crossing his legs and looking up at Wilhelm attentively.
Wilhelm glowered down at his cue cards. The hand written notes swirled around as he looked at him. He twisted his free hand in the material of his sweatpants and let out a deep breath, ready to start again.
“The great pacific garbage patch has a surface area of 1.6 kilometres squared, that is twice that of the American state of Texas. Plastic refuge from the continents of, the continents, most of the rubbish comes from, ugh!” Wilhelm cuts of his stuttering by slumping to the carpet, discarding his cue cards to the side and pressing his palms deep into his eye sockets. “This is useless, if I can’t even do this in front of you how am I supposed to give a speech in front of my whole class.”
Humming contemplatively, Erik reached down and picked up the cue cards, scanning through them as an excuse to not have to make Wilhelm feel the weight of his gaze.
“You’ll get there, Wille. Everyone has to start somewhere when it comes to public speaking.”
Wilhelm groaned and then peeked up at Erik through his fingers.
“That’s easy for you to say, you love talking in front of a crowd, just like mum.”
Erik scoffed, but couldn’t quite bring himself to deny it. As was customary, Erik had an increase in public duties with his confirmation at the start of last year. He always looked at ease and in his element, whether it be at a hospital visiting sick kids or a war memorial giving a speech to honour fallen soldiers. He never showed any signs of experiencing the same twisted knot of nerves that Wilhelm did any time there was an expectant sea of eyes on him, twelve years not enough to acclimatise himself to the attention of the whole nation. Wilhelm hesitated, and then brought up his concerns in a hurried rush.
“Do you ever feel, like when you have to go speak or whatever, or when you are at an event and you have to keep up an appearance for cameras, do you ever get like sick in your stomach? Or, like, feel like you’re going to throw up because it’s so hard to breathe?”
Erik waited a moment, running through what Wilhelm had said in his head.
“Everyone get’s nervous doing anything they aren’t used to.” Erik paused again, as if weighing up how best to advise his brother. “You just have to work harder if public speaking is something you are struggling with. It’s just like any other skill, you won’t get any better at it if you don’t practice.”
Wilhelm buried his head into his arms at Erik’s words, knees drawn up to his chin. His eyes started to sting and he blinked away tears, not wanting Erik to see. Shame burned at his cheeks. Of course feeling uncomfortable at public events was normal, it was only Wilhelm who struggled to be in large groups of people, each pair of eyes on him feeling like a needle point lodged in his skin.
Erik moved off the bed and sat next to his younger brother. Over the summer Wilhelm had shot up in height, and now they were closer than ever to being mirror images, sat on the floor side by side. Erik hesitated a moment, his hand hovering over Wilhelm’s shoulder, before pulling his brother in and resting the side of his face on the top of Wilhelm’s head. When he spoke, Wilhelm could feel it reverberating through his skull just as much as he could hear it.
“Your speech will go great. The teacher won’t know what hit them, eh?”
Wilhelm buried himself deeper into his brothers arms and attempted to get a hold of his breathing.
In, then out. Over and over again.
The crowds in the school hallway seemed fuzzy and far away in Wilhelm’s vision, more blocks of colours than actual people as he pushed passed them in his pursuit of the bathroom. Snatches of noise and conversation coalesced in his eardrums in a dull roar. Who was going to Linnéa’s party on Saturday, had anyone done their maths homework on functions yet, so and so posted this on Instagram have you seen it, Isak was cheating on Erika again why does she keep going back to him?
Wilhelm gripped at the straps on his backpack and kept his head down. It was one month into the school year and for most students at their public high school the novelty of a prince in their midst and mostly worn off, even so he could still feel the ubiquitous looks that followed in his wake like a bad smell.
Seeing his destination, Wilhelm hung a sharp left, lunging into the male bathroom and locking himself into a stall. He flipped the toilet seat down and collapsed heavily onto it. His bag was still on his back and he ran his fingers into his hair, tugging hard until he could feel sharp pain radiating through his scalp. His insides were twisting tight and uncomfortably, and his breathing was short.
It had started off as any other innocuous biology lesson. A dissection of a cow eye, done in pairs to complement their unit on the visual and auditory systems of the body. His lab partner Roland wanted to be a veterinarian when he grew up so he happily took the lead, holding the scalpel with confidence and competently identifying the structures they were supposed to. The sight of Roland leaning forward, burnished rust red hair falling in front of his lab goggles at he levered up the eye’s lens with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration had settled heavy and warm deep in Wilhelm’s stomach.
“Wille, what else were we supposed to find?”
Wilhelm coughed, trying to seem unaffected as he quickly scanned the whiteboard at the front of the class.
“Uh, I think we just have the retina and optic nerve left.”
“Thanks,” Roland flashed a quick smile up at Wilhelm, complete with dimples, and returned to the bloodied eye. Wilhelm felt a surge of heat in his cheeks and started flicking through his notes, hoping everyone in the class was too focused to notice.
The rest of the class passed in a torturous slog, Wilhelm feeling each moment stretch like pulled taffy as he struggled to conceal his beating heart and the butterflies in his stomach. Every time Roland flicked his hair out of his eyes or called out a note for Wilhelm to write down he ducked down his head and prayed no one was watching him. Eventually they packed up their dissections and the bell rang to free him from his own personal hell.
Now, privately ensconced on the toilet in a locked stall, Wilhelm felt his breathing speed up and turn harsh. His chest was tight and painful, and Wilhelm rubbed at it as his lungs screamed for oxygen. There was no one else in the bathroom outside Wilhelm’s stall, but beyond the door in the hallway he could hear students milling about on their way to lunch. Wilhelm bore them no mind as his thoughts tore up his brain like a four-wheel drive looping around a muddy field, destructive and raucous.
What if someone had noticed that Wilhelm had barely been able to eek out a sentence to Roland. What if someone caught him looking at him too long. What if Roland had found Wilhelm weird. What if. What if. What if.
Wilhelm rubbed harder at his chest and dragged breath in and out of his lungs. He tried to focus on the buzzing in his ears rather than his racing mind. Thinking was dangerous, it was better to just sink into the feeling of nothingness, like none of what was happening to his body was real.
Shakily breathing out through his nose, Wilhelm put his head between his knees. He needed fresh air, but the thought of opening up the stall and having to walk through the halls to get outside was too overwhelming. Tears clung to his eyelashes and he tried to hold in the sobs clawing to get out of his throat. The last thing he needed was another student to come in and discover the prince bawling his eyes out in the bathroom like a pathetic child. All Wilhelm could do was swallow down the panic, keep breathing, and hope that no one notices.
Wilhelm lay on the hardwood floor of the gym and laughed so hard he thought he might throw up. Directly in front of him, Simon struggled on the pull up bar, a yell pulled deep from his stomach as his chin limped past the bar before he fell to the ground in exhaustion.
“Shut up, Wille,” he panted, leaning back to rest on his elbows with his legs askew in front of him. “You can’t get to ten either, I saw August yelling at you earlier.”
The pair were alone in the gym, the rest of the rowing team having called an end to practice ten minutes ago and the bodyguards that had been shadowing Wilhelm since his brother’s funeral safely on the other side of the gym doors. Wilhelm coughed in an attempt to clear the last laugh from his throat before looking up to meet Simon’s gaze.
“No, it was just, you really sounded like someone was trying to kill a cat,” Wilhelm was overcome with laughter once more as Simon lobbed a sweaty sneaker at him. “Like, forget being Hillerska’s premier soloist, I was about to call PETA!”
Simon dragged himself over to where Wilhelm was flat on his back and placed a hand over his mouth trying to stifle his laughter.
“I hate you,” Simon managed to force out through his giggles as the boys playfully started wrestling on the gym floor. Simon managed to win by straddling his friend’s middle, one knee pressing into Wilhelm’s stomach. “I’m way fitter than you, admit it!”
Wilhelm pushed him off, Simon letting him as both boys lay on their sides looking at one another.
“Let’s just call it a tie,” said Wilhelm, grinning at Simon. Simon reflected it with a smile of his own, reaching up to tuck a strand of Wilhelm’s swoopy bangs behind his ear. He leaned forward to press a gently kiss to the corner of Wilhelm’s mouth.
“Whatever you say, Wille.”
Wilhelm grabbed onto the front of Simon’s shirt and spared a glance to the doors, checking to make sure his bodyguards hadn’t made a sudden appearance, before pulling Simon into a deeper kiss. Their noses bumped and Wilhelm could feel Simon’s smile against his mouth. They both tasted a little like sweat, and a little like the carrots with garlic that had been served with lunch. They parted to take a breath and Wilhelm scanned Simon’s face, trying to memorise his relaxed laughter lines and the scant few freckles that dotted his face.
“You know,” Simon murmured, running his hands through Wilhelm’s hair and brushing it out of his face, “my Mum’s going to be so pissed. This is like the third night in a row I’ve not come home for dinner after saying I’d be there.”
Wilhelm froze imperceptibly, Simon only noticing due to their proximity. He coughed to clear his throat and avoided Simon’s eyes.
“She won’t, like, ask where you’ve been or anything, right?” The words felt small and forced leaving his tongue. Wilhelm could feel a familiar wave of panic rising through his stomach, the same bands of tightness constricting his chest that he’s felt for all his life. Simon gently shushed him and cupped his face, his thumb stroking back and forth across his cheek.
“It’s fine, Wille. I’ve told her I’ve had rowing training. It’s not even a lie. She doesn’t know about you. There is nothing to worry about.”
Wilhelm swallowed thickly and sat up, sick of the hardwood floor digging into him. Simon followed, looking at him with a worried, furrowed brow. Sighing, Wilhelm leant forward to bury his head into the crook of Simon’s neck. The other boy pulled his arms tight around Wilhelm and held him, rubbing his back in soothing circles as Wilhelm regulated his breathing.
“I’m sorry I’m like this. You deserve better.” Wilhelm mumbled into Simon’s neck, so quiet that he could barely pick it up.
Simon didn’t know how to properly respond so he just kept holding Wilhelm, rocking slightly back and forth. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed this behaviour before, from the movie night when they had first kissed and Simon could feel his pulse racing so fast his heart could’ve jumped out of his skin, or even Wilhelm’s first day of school where he could barely make eye contact with anyone and he was holding himself as stiffly as some of the statues that could be found in the various nooks and crannies of Hillerska’s grounds. Simon pressed a kiss onto the crown of Wilhelm’s head and deliberated on what he should say.
“There is nothing wrong with you, Wille. I am here for you. Just keep breathing, it will be alright.”
Wilhelm drew a shaky breath deep into his lungs and pulled away to look into Simon’s eyes.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
Simon placed a barely there kiss on Wilhelm’s lips before leaning forward and pressing their foreheads together, both boys closing their eyes. They held hands, fingers interlocking in a tight grip.
“I like you, and that’s real, isn’t that what you said? Right? I like you Wilhelm, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The two stayed there for a while longer, holding each other tightly and breathing in each other’s air. Not long enough for Wilhelm’s bodyguards to come and check on them, or for Simon’s mother to get too worried, but long enough for Simon’s words to loop themselves through Wilhelm’s brain enough times for them to become engrained, impossible to remove. The two boys sat there, wrapped in each other, and breathed.